Political Quotes

“I rise to discuss a huge challenge in the State of Oregon--specifically, a drought that is affecting the southern Klamath Basin. This is an area that had a terrible drought in 1992. This drought set everyone in this basin against each other. How do you allocate those few precious drops of water between the river and the lake and the irrigation, the fish, the farmers? It is terribly tough when it doesn't rain. It so happens that this year, the water that has come into the lake is lower than at any time the water levels have been recorded and lower by very significant amounts. So this isn't just a shortfall of rain below the average or a modest few weeks without precipitation; this is the worst drought in the Klamath Basin in recorded history. That is why it has received status as a Federal disaster. The Governor of Oregon wrote on March 16 and on April 5 requesting a disaster designation for Klamath County, OR, due to the losses caused by the ongoing drought and related disasters, and the Department of Agriculture assessed that and issued that disaster declaration. There are well over 1,000 families--about 1,400 families--who farm the Klamath Basin and about 200,000 acres of land in that very productive region.”